Category Archives: User Interface

I often get questions about finding information on SharePoint 2010, the best places to learn and the “hows” and “whys”. It seems that many people will type in a single word or phrase into their favorite search engine…look at the first page and throw up their hands saying they can’t find anything.

It is the unfortunate state of our world with information overload and the attention spans of fleas. I also find that many people seem to assume that every post/site or page on the web is absolutely factual and they don’t know how to determine the validity of the information they are ready.

With this commentary on society out of the way, I figured i would post some “getting started” links and resources for those of you wondering how to get started.

Training

Advanced IT Pro Training – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sharepoint/ff677987.aspxIT Professional Overview – A video that shows you some of the great new features in SharePoint 2010
Experiencing the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 User Interface – A video that provides a look at the new, improved user interface in SharePoint 2010

Getting Started Screencast Series – A series of entry-level screencasts by Microsoft SharePoint MVPs that lets you take advantage of an 11-module e-learning course

Documentation

SharePoint 2010 Book Excerpts – Book excerpts are online excerpts of published books.

SharePoint 2010 Visual How-Tos – Visual how-to articles are 10-15 pages in length and combine some of the best elements of blogs, video, and technical articles by providing a brief overview, a code sample, and a how-to video.

Microsoft offers some improvements to the list editing experience in SharePoint 2010.

What is it?

Inline editing enables you to edit individual lines in a list without having to open the edit item window or switch to the datasheet view. Inline editing is done directly on the list page. It is actually component of the view displaying the list, and isn’t on by default.

How to turn it on

Enabling inline editing is a simple process. To enable it for your current view, click the Modify View button in the Ribbon, scroll down to the section called inline editing, expand this section, and then check the box to Allow Inline Editing. Click OK to save the change to the view, and you’ve just enabled inline editing.

Using it

To use inline editing, click the small Edit icon that now appears to the left of each line in the list as you hover the mouse cursor over it. The fields in each column for the line item will become editable.

Make your changes, then click the Save icon where the edit icon was. There is also a Cancel icon to close inline editing if you want to discard your changes.

Inline editing will also work for different types of columns including Managed Metadata with type-ahead capabilities.

What is the point?

Some might question why Microsoft added this functionality. Well, for those of you that have been working with SharePoint in the user community would realize that editing properties isn’t something the user’s think as an intuitive process. Clicking through a number of screens or dialogs isn’t something they are going to do on a regular basis. Inline editing provides the user with the ability to quickly edit properties from the same screen without having to use the data sheet view (if they know how to switch views in the first place).